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CQ Zone |
30 |
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Grid Square |
QH43 |
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IOTA |
OC-007 |
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The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has a Weather Monitoring station on the island and apart from the three Met Buro staff at
any one time Willis is home to a plethora of wildlife, predominantly thousands of Booby birds.
These birds were nesting at the time and extreme care was needed to avoid stepping on any eggs whilst walking along the track to and from the beach. The Boobies have an amusing tactic of pretending to be injured. They will run along in front of you flapping a pretend broken wing & not fly out of your way. |
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Photo taken from the top of the mast of the "Bach & Byte"
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The VK9WI team
Pilot Stations
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Front L>R: Alan David Rear L>R: Harry, Nick, Peter
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The major ocean race in Southern Queensland is held at Easter, and a late Easter this year meant a late VK9WI. Despite the DXpedition to Willis taking place rather late in the period around equinox, the 6M results were still quite reasonable.
The 1500 kg of gear was loaded on board at Yeppoon where the cat departed from on Tuesday May 9. The trip out was uneventful though we did spend one day sheltering behind an island due to strong winds and high seas. Once we had passed through the Great Barrier Reef it was smooth fast sailing all the way to Willis.
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The Bach and Byte is very fast and speeds of up to 17 kts were reached with the spinnaker up.
The memorable moment came early Friday morning around 3am when we were joined by a group of dolphins riding alongside our bows.
Four days after leaving Bowen we had arrived around 1am on Saturday (May 13) at which time the crew took a well deserved nap. |
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7am Saturday morning and in action again with the arduous task of unloading all the equipment lot by lot into the dinghy and
transferring it to shore. Use of a wheel barrow from then made it easier to get the gear into the operating shed.
There is no sheltered anchorage at Willis and given the constant 20+ knot South-Easter there is always a small surf running even on the lee side of the island. As it turned out the anchor cable and terminal gear were tested to breaking point in the constant surge and a second anchor had to be deployed. |
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Welcome to Willis Island!
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Harry was largely confined to the boat as he was nursing a rather nasty gash to the leg from an earlier mishap aboard the cat. Harry’s constant attendance on the cat proved essential so as not to let the only means of return travel float away in the distance!
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Equipment included two HF stations with linears, a 6M station and an AO-10 station.
One HF station would concentrate on 160/80/40 during local night time with a Battlecreek special antenna. The second HF station would concentrate on 20/15/10 with a tri-bander. Even though tents were packed we were lucky enough to setup shack in one of the Met Buro sheds. Use of the mains supply was already pre-arranged. The 6M station consisted of a barefoot TS-60 and a 5 element K6STI design yagi at 22 ft (same yagi used by H44PT in April). A 20W 6m beacon was running on the boat about 600 metres from the shack but we found that there wasn't quite enough isolation and it was switched off. Plans to use a programmable keyer to put the TS60 into beacon mode as an alternative did not eventuate as the planner made an unexpected early departure from the scene! |
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Unloading the equipment from the Bach & Byte
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Although rather early for the VK Winter Es season it seemed promising that we may be able to work back home on Es.
F2 contacts into California and Nevada were also made on May 7, so despite being well after the equinox period there was still a slim chance that VK9WI might actually work across the Pacific.
Before departure we had checked VK4FNQ's daily 6M loggings from Northern VK4 as a guide to what to expect; Japan, South East Asia, Pacific and maybe North America were all possible.
Sunday May 14 at 0304 and the first 6M QSO with YF100. Eighteen minutes later and VK4’s were being worked.
Working the 1300kms back to our home grid on E's not long after the 6M rig was first switched on was a real thrill and most unexpected.
It was a delight that VK9WI made the grade to continental USA by working Bob, K6QXY, and our contact with Jack, N6XQ, was country #99 for him.
VK9WI had a strong presence on HF into most of Europe. Reports indicated that we were putting a very good signal into all target areas on HF including EU on 14/18/21/24 & 28MHz during UK daytime. Also, good reports were being received for the low bands at the appropriate times.
All seemed to be going well...
The following morning came the bad news that there had been an accident. Peter (the main 6M op) had an unintentional encounter with the aluminium dinghy which broke his lower left leg in three places. He was ferrying the makings for a BBQ from the cats galley ashore when a wave dumped the dinghy on his foot just as he was stepping ashore. Aghh!!!
Umm, guys can we please use the Satellite phone to make an emergency call?
The 6M and WARC yagis were torn down and put to one side in order to make a landing space for the chopper. The flight out from Cairns almost exhausted the fuel supply and the chopper was re-fuelled with diesel from the Met Station generator supply (didn’t know they could run on diesel!)
The patient was flown the 426 km to Cairns Base Hospital. Doctors agreed that the helicopter was by far the better option, as the crew had discussed packing up all the gear and sailing away on day four with maybe a three to five day trip back to the mainland.
This left the three remaining members spread pretty thinly over the ground. Whilst lying in his hospital bed Peter was expecting 6M to be neglected as a result, but, Alan kept the 6M QSOs going. Unfortunately OSCAR operations had to be cancelled as there simply wasn’t enough man-power left other than to keep plugging away on the heavily populated mainstream bands.
The highest priority was to work HF and 6M and try and give as many operators a new one on at least one band.
Bill got involved in late February by finding the VK9WI web site and reading the ‘operating procedures’. He e-mailed David to say – what a good idea if all DXpeditions stuck to this – and quick as a flash, David e-mailed back to say –‘EU pilot job vacant – how about it!!’ and Bill got stuck with it!
Bill was to look after Europe and Adam would look after the Rest of World – disappointingly there weren’t any volunteers from North America to look after that side of the pond(?)
Adam had a sked every morning with the team, initially on 40M then onto 20M once they were further out. After the exchange of traffic and any necessary phone calls Adam cobbled together a News Release which he would FTP up to VK9WI site, post to the VK9WI eGroup mailing list and send to Bill who would distribute it on the appropriate Newsgroups and other outlets including packet.
Watching the packet and Internet clusters – replying to announcements and questions were all part of the daily job. Sounds simple but between them consumed at least six hours each day! Contact between Adam & Bill was via e-mail, as was getting the log data (eventually) back to the mainland. Originally log information was to be sent back via a HF AMTOR link but the MFJ-1278 TNC that Adam had a loan of just didn’t want to play!
Thankfully the team had access to the internet from the Met Buro office but this was used sparingly so as not to outdo their welcome. The pilots received many individual requests... can you please listen for ABC on XX band at YY time.
Hmmm. OK, lets try running all the individual requests through a low pass filter and see what we end up with! Trying to balance all the conflicting demands with only three operators was going to be an impossible chore. Still, given the limited resources I think we managed to satisfy most… unfortunately except the AO-10 folks.
The biggest lesson learnt is that you’ll never be able to please everybody all the time.
This gave Nick one last shot at 160 (a band just as frustrating as six). All the gear was then carried back down to the beach, loaded into the dingy and back onto the cat.
On the Monday morning we only had to dismantle the Battle Creek Special and a tribander so not too much of a hard job.
Alan donned his scuba gear to have a last look at the tropical fish and pickup the second anchor and then we were off.
The trip home was very rough with 40kt winds and 4 metre seas all the way to the coast. It was a very tired (and relieved!) crew that made it back to terra firma (Bowen) at 5am on the Wednesday morning.
Remembering this wasn’t some huge multi-national DXpedition team with a dozen operators or so the 18,600 QSOs on all bands from 160m to 6m in eight days was a pretty good result.
Alan, Nick, David and Harry did a great job under trying circumstances. The lessons gained will be invaluable for "the next one".
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YB-YH (Indonesia) 4 YF100
14/05/2000 03:04
VK
(Australia) 17 VK4KK
14/05/2000 03:22
YJ
(Vanuatu) 1 YJ8UU
14/05/2000 04:17
HL
(South Korea) 8 HL3IUA 14/05/2000
08:30
JA-JS
(Japan) 1,508 JH7MQU
14/05/2000 08:31
KH6
(Hawaii) 6 KH6SX
14/05/2000 23:41
V7
(Marshall Is.) 2 V73AT 14/05/2000
23:41
DU-DZ
(Philippines) 1 DU1EV 15/05/2000
11:35
BV
(Taiwan) 3 BV2DP
15/05/2000 11:38
K,W,N,AA-AK (U.S.A.)
11 K6QXY 15/05/2000 00:31
VS6, VR2
(Hong Kong) 27 VR2LC
18/05/2000 13:12
BY,BT
(China) 2
BG7OH 18/05/2000 13:29
9V
(Singapore) 1 9V1UV
20/05/2000 03:27
KH2
(Guam) 1
KH2JU 20/05/2000 11:45
KH0
(Mariana Is.) 1 N3WW/KH0 20/05/2000 21:38
------------------------------------------------------------ Total:
(15) 1,594
PREFIX
(DXCC) QSOs FIRST
DATE UTC
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Thanks go to the Met Buro guys for allowing us to use not only the mains power, the equipment shed for the shack but also the internet connection. Ohh, and the use of that satellite phone. There are also many sponsors and donors the team would like to thank, and without their support DXPeditions such as this could not happen.
Please check out the list on the web site and support those who support these trips that help give us a new one!
Peter, the upside of having a broken leg - No distractions from doing the QSLing!
